Possible Worlds
by Ammaren
Summary: There is a world where the Captain of the Tenth Division will grow taller, will age. There is a world where the Lieutenant of the Tenth will not be driven to drink. It is not this world.


**Possible Worlds**

Summary: There is a world where the Captain of the Tenth Division will grow taller, will age. There is a world where the Lieutenant of the Tenth will not be driven to drink. It is not this world.

* * *

There is a world where the Captain of the Tenth Division is a tall, slender young man, with eyes the exact quality of the light reflecting off the glaciers. (Incidentally, there is a world a finger's width apart from this one—exactly so—where the Captain of the Third Division is a child-Captain, known as a genius. _And he will tear you apart_ if you lay a finger on Matsumoto Rangiku. _And_ he will do it with a creepy smile.)

He is known for his swordsmanship, as distinctive as his pale-white hair. Long, graceful slashes with the sword, as if in a dance, or a kata. He favours fluid, sweeping cuts, ice flowing like water in the wake of the cutting-edge of his blade. Dragon curling along the movements of his blade, now like lightning, now like coalesced ice. Catching the opponent on the icicle-fangs of the dragon and the sharp winter-bite of Hyorinmaru's edge.

The way he carries his zanpakuto is also distinctive. Hyorinmaru is longer than most blades; he carries the zanpakuto thrust into a teal-green sash, the only splash of colour on his uniform. The rest is black, and the white of the haori. The sash, rather than the obi, is eye-catching.

It is warmer than his eyes.

He flies on wings of ice, on wings of air. A dragon cannot be shackled, cannot be bound.

There is a world, where all of this is _true_.

It is not this world.

* * *

There is a world where the Lieutenant of the Tenth Division is a bright young woman, with eyes that shift from slate-grey to sky-blue, depending on the light. (Incidentally, there is a world a hair's breath from this one—perhaps a sliver less—where the Lieutenant of the Fifth Division is weeping, helpless with the knowledge that she's been left behind as her childhood friend leaves forever in the bubble-universe of a negacion beam, at the side of a murderer and traitor. And a blind man.)

She's known for her easy laugh, her fierce loyalty. The way she's full of presence, full of life, even on the days when she's withdrawn. She's probably one of the few Lieutenants in the Gotei Thirteen who are great pranksters, and equally good at not getting caught.

And in battle, she moves with a sharp feline grace, like quicksilver tumbling through glass, ash spilling from her sword. If Hyorinmaru is the epitome of the ice-type zanpakuto, Haineko…well. Haineko isn't anywhere near the apex of all dissolution-types. That particular honour belongs to Sebonzakura. Next to the soft-pink of Senbonzakura's petal-blades, Haineko's ash is far more drab. _But_. Haineko stretches, purrs lazily. There are more secrets, she says with a chesire grin. I'm not telling you.

Haineko's ash is far finer than the discrete petals of Senbonzakura. It is possible—just barely possible—that a fast enough person could evade each and every one of Senbonzakura's blades, could strike away at each individual petal and thus avoid being cut.

The possibility does not exist with Haineko's ash. Where the ash goes, a person can only flee.

Incidentally, she is _very good_ at dodging attacks and running away. She'd better be, when a handful of ash isn't anything she can block blows with.

That also explains a great deal about why she's the best prankster in Sereitei, though she suspects certain Captains just have it easy.

She also wears a pink scarf. She used to wear it knotted, like a kerchief. Now she wears it draped, like a shawl.

* * *

There is a world balanced on a knife-edge, where certain changes balance out: the Captain of the Tenth Division meets the ryoka boy at the West Gate of Rukongai, and orders Jidanbo to shut the gate. Jidanbo obeys. A dragon of high-pressured water smashes into the ryoka, but he judges his strength to a hair.

The boy will survive. "Hmmph," the Captain says. He walks away.

Later: the boy-captain of the Third Division hears the Captain of the Tenth threaten the Fifth. His smile doesn't waver, but his mind is working furiously.

They clash beneath the darkened skies. What worries the Ichimaru the most of all, though he will never say it, is that he doesn't sense anything at all in Hitsugaya's blade. Just…ice. Dispassionate. Almost-empty.

 _Just like ice_.

The last of the ice takes a full night to shed. He doesn't go to the Fourth Division, or he'll have a lot of explaning to do.

Hitsugaya later uses Hakufuku on Matsumoto. Ichimaru swears he'll kill him when he sees her weeping in the aftermath. He watches them leave through the yellow-haze of a negacion beam.

Later: Ichimaru stabs Matsumoto by mistake and gets cut down by Aizen as Soul Society fights Aizen's Espada. Hitsugaya turns on Aizen at the last minute, ice spreading from the cut of his blade to bind and kill… _but_.

Aizen strikes him down, too. He dies after looking into Ichimaru's eyes and asking if Hinamori was fine.

* * *

But these are all possible worlds.

This is what really happens:

A boy makes his way to West Rukongai. He cannot remember anything. If he were to remember anything, it would go something like this: he is young and confused and newly-sent to Soul Society. In several days, he is taken by a group of men in black kimonos. He fights with them, biting and scratching but they take him anyway. They reach into him, and pull and _pull_ and he is screaming…

He keeps walking. Feels the dust beneath his bare feet. If he keeps walking, he won't notice the emptiness within, the one that keeps tugging at him like a pebble in his clothing. In the end, he meets a girl in Junrinan, the first district of West Rukongai. Her grandmother takes him in. In time, he learns to pretend-to-smile, to scowl. He learns to call the grandmother _obaa-san_ and the girl bed-wetter Momo. He learns that he likes juicy watermelons, seeds are for spitting, amanatto is _wonderful_. He learns that water is wet and comforting when it is cool.

He learns that he has dreams and that he will never fit in. He can sit for hours on the verandah, staring out into space, the manifestation of the half-emptiness that sits in his chest like lead.

He is _incomplete_.

In the end, the girl leaves to chase her dreams. _Huh_ , he thinks.

* * *

This is what really happens:

A girl meets a boy who gives her dried persimmons and tells her she's hungry because she has spiritual energy. For the first time in her life, she knows her birthday, and that is the day she met him. He is more than just a little personal saviour; she thinks she might actually begin to _like_ him.

One day, the men in the black robes come and take her. She is beaten, kicked, and…something is taken from her.

Everything becomes drab after that, like ash. She cries because something's been taken from her. She doesn't know what. The tears are a measure, something that she still has. The boy becomes more distant, his intensity turned inwards until one day he stifles it and she can't even tell what he's thinking anymore. He's always been in the habit of wandering. One day, he leaves, and he comes back blood-splattered and tells her he's going to become a shinigami.

She says, _I'll go with you_ , and she means it.

If he leaves, she'll be alone. Alone with the emptiness.

* * *

He keeps ascending, first through the years at the Academy, then through the ranks. The dragon sleeps uneasily in his soul. The call of the dragon is loud because sound echoes in space. If he keeps working, it draws his mind away from the fact that he is…lacking. Somehow diminished.

And he doesn't know why.

* * *

She's tried time and again to refine her shikai, to perhaps even contemplate the beginnings of manifestation. She says Haineko is lazy. In truth, Haineko is lazy. But when Haineko doesn't want to tell her something, it is marked by an annoying chesire smile, a purr, and lazy… _Wouldn't you like to know, Ran-chan?_

The silence frightens her.

She might actually have to admit there's…nothing there.

* * *

Perhaps that draws them together, even without them realising it. A boy who will never grow taller, who will never exceed his physical age, who will never truly soar into the sky. His bankai is incomplete, an arrancar once says. His powers are not yet mature.

How can they be mature, if part of them has been so neatly excised? Part of him has been cut away, power shaped into an orb. A tiny thing, really. Such a difference it makes, this emptiness which he cannot begin to name. All his life, he has been running away from this splinter in the very corner of his being, and sometimes…sometimes, he almost guesses what has been done to him.

A girl who will never master her shikai, never reach a level of perfect communion with her sword. She is fortunate in that she has aged; she has grown into a confident young woman. But. There are the quiet places, where her sword will not speak. The silence frightens her. She finds drinking partners among her fellow Lieutenants. She drinks, even when alone. She shirks from work, does all sorts of things that make her Captain's eyebrows draw together until he shrieks, " _Matsumoto!"_

The noise means she's alive, means she doesn't have to face the unendurable silence where part of her soul has been torn away.

There are two of them, a dragon with clipped wings, a cat with no whiskers. Two broken little things, who have somehow found their way to each other.

It will have to be enough.


End file.
